Skeptics Circle announcement and a plea to fellow skeptics

Round and round the Skeptics’ Circle goes, coming rapidly around to arrive yet again in less than a week. This time around, it’s set to land on next Thursday, June 19 at Ionian Enchantment. Blog-specific instructions for submitting your pearls of skepticism, science, and critical thinking can be found here, and more general instructions can be found here. So, if you’re a blogger who regularly likes to apply reason, skepticism, and critical thinking to dubious claims, get cracking and send Mike your best stuff before Wednesday! And, as always, if you’re such a blogger interested in hosting one of these sessions, check out the guidelines for hosts to see what’s involved and then drop me a line.

Now for a more serious matter. If you look at the Skeptics’ Circle schedule, you’ll see that the 92nd Meeting of the Skeptics’ Circle is scheduled for July 31. The host was to have been Blue Collar Scientist. Unfortunately, via PZ Myers and Phil Plait, I recently learned that our host has been diagnosed with liver cancer. My sympathy goes out to Jeff, and I said so in an e-mail, along with an offer to put in his service the few connections I have in the world of liver surgeons. I also encourage all my readers to offer their support as well.

Sadly (and I almost hate to bring this up), there does remain the cold, hard issue of who’s going to host the July 31 Circle. I tried e-mailing Jeff, but not surprisingly he never responded. My assumption for the moment is that he won’t be able to host, given that a blog carnival is of trivial (actually, of no) importance compared to taking care of a life-threatening disease. However, fairness and consideration for Jeff demand that I try to find out for sure one way or the other directly from Jeff himself before I either give the slot away to one of the hosts already signed up for a date later than July 31 or decide to take the slot myself. So, if anyone out there can help me out and tell me how to get a hold of him, I’d appreciate it.